How lovely is your dwelling, O God, my hope and strength

Author: Jean Janzen

Jean Janzen was born on December 5, 1933, the seventh of Henry Peter Wiebe and Anna Schultz Wiebe's eventual eight children (Three Mennonite Poets 5). For the first five years of her life, Janzen lived in Dalmeny, Saskatchewan (A Cappella 25). In 1938, she moved to Mountain Lake, Minnesota when her schoolteacher father began his second ministry as a pastor (“Coming into Voice”). A year later, the family moved to Kansas (“Coming into Voice”).
Janzen says she cannot remember when she wrote her first poem, but the first evidence of her work is a handwritten book of five poems that she made in third or fourth grade, which was saved by her mother through the family’s many moves (E-mail Interview). She had very little exposure to po… Go to person page >

Tune

First published with the text in the Cologne Gesangbuch of 1599 (see above), ES IST EIN ROS is a rounded bar form tune (AABA). The tune has characteristics of a Renaissance madrigal; it invites performance by an unaccompanied choir so that all the fine part writing and subtle rhythms can be clearly…